INCIDENCE AND CLINICAL FEATURES OF TUBERCULOSIS IN HIV-INFECTED CHILDREN IN THE SVERDLOVSK REGION

Abstract

The paper analyzes the structure of HIV-infected children who was ill with tuberculosis in the Sverdlovsk Region in 2004-2012. The incidence of tuberculosis in children aged 0 to 14 years in the Sverdlovsk Region showed a 79.4% increase in the above period due to the introduction of Russian innovative technologies for the diagnosis of this disease in children. At the same time there was a rise in both the number of HIV-infected children aged 0 to 14 years and the proportion of same-age children with late-stage HIV infection. Simultaneously, the incidence of tuberculosis in the non-HIV-infected children aged 0 to 14 years was 55.2-193.2 times lower than that in the HIV-infected children. In 2004-2014, the Sverdlovsk Region notified fewer new cases of tuberculosis among the children without HIV infection than among those with its late stages. Non-HIV-infected children of both sexes were also ill with tuberculosis less frequently than HIV-infected boys and girls. HIV-infected children 1-3 and 7-14 years of age proved to be most vulnerable to tuberculosis. Among those who fell ill with tuberculosis, there was a preponderance of patients with late-stage HIV infection; moreover, the majority (79.6%) received highly active antiretroviral therapy. 63.3% of the cases were in contact with a tuberculosis patient, only every five patients had chemoprophylaxis for this disease. High-quality vaccination against tuberculosis prevented complications and bacterial excretion in children with comorbidity. Out of the clinical forms of tuberculosis in children with HIV infection, there was a predominance of primary tuberculous complex and intrathoracic lymph node tuberculosis. The latter was less common in children without HIV infection than in those with this disease; the same was true of bacterial excretion in respiratory tuberculosis.